The Fine Line
by GoddessofSnark
Summary: He walked a fine line between good and evil, not caring about either side, only about keeping his balance.


A/N standard disclaimers apply. they belong to JKR, yada yada yada you know the spiel.

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"_The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all" - Albert Camus_

He walked a fine line between life and death. He spent every waking moment on the earth, slowly balancing on it, a tightrope walker caught in mid-air, knowing that one wrong step, one misplaced toe and he'd be falling down to his doom, crashing and burning without even a second thought, without a chance to even reach up and grab on, after all, tightrope wire is so sturdy, so tightly wound that it would likely slice right through his hands anyway, severing his fingers from his body. It was the only thing he'd ever seen that was wound tighter than he was.

He didn't want the war to end. He liked it, he liked the fighting. He liked the constant swaying back and forth, the tides of battle, the give and take. He liked being hunted by both sides, and yet needed by both as well, hated, but accepted, they didn't want to like him, but they needed him, they wanted to kill him, but he was far to vital to kill. He thrived off of that knowledge, that no matter how much they hated him, so long as he kept his balance, he would be kept alive.

He had no stake in either side winning. He thought he had, once, when he had been a naïve youth, when he had thought that the world could still be a good place, when he saw the forest through the trees. But now, after being on the earth, he learned that it wasn't a good place, it never was a good place, and it would never be a good place. Peace would not change that. Peace would not make a difference. He had lived through peace, and even peace was hell.

War was a surprising solace. There was something calming about the chaos of a battlefield. It was only with pandemonium forming around him that he could relax. He needed the action. He needed the excitement in order to go on. He needed the screaming, the shouting, he needed to be constantly ducking out of the way of death being flung at him to survive. He couldn't survive without it. He needed it.

He wouldn't know what to do with peace. He wouldn't know where to begin if he didn't have the constant stress upon him. At least the last time peace reigned upon the land he had the constant stress of teaching, of attempting to drill knowledge into the minds of dunderheads, of turning himself into the most hated teacher simply so that he would make sure that he would have to watch his back, so that his guard would not be let down, so that he would always be on edge. He knew this day would come, he could sense it.

He had prayed for it. Not that he wanted the Dark to win, not that he wanted the Dark Lord to resurface, but he had prayed for it simply so that their would be confrontation once more. He did not care who won, he did not care who lost, he did not care what lives were spent, who the heroes of the battle were, he cared only about the continuous fighting. Because the continuous fighting kept him going, gave him the strength he needed to stay alive.

His body relied on the tension, it was what kept him propped up, it was the strings to his marionette. If the tension in the strings was lost, he'd go limp, unable to move, unable to stand up and survive. It was how he lived. He fed off the tension, off the stress. He needed it, the same way a heroin addict, a cocaine addict needed their fixes, he was addicted to stress, to pushing himself to the limit, to working until his breaking point.

In a sick way, he didn't want to survive the war. He didn't want to know what a peaceful life would be like. To live in peace would to be living without a reason, without a cause. He'd be a shell, hollow and empty without the constant pressure upon him. He fed off of it, he did not need food, he needed coffee and he needed stress. He could fancy himself being decorated with an Order of Merlin posthumously for sacrifices made during the war, he cold see himself turned into a hero, dashing and gallant.

Peace was an unknown for him, and he feared the unknown. He was quite content in his unhappiness, quite content in his chaotic life, balancing between both sides, running back and forth with the breath of death blowing across his neck, always there waiting for him, but keeping just out of reach of it. That was what he lived for.

He wasn't moral, he didn't believe in fighting for some greater good, he didn't believe in bringing down a Dark Lord who was responsible for much pain and suffering. He cared only about himself. There is a certain type of person in this world that gets off on pushing themselves to the limit, who is always searching out for the next great high, who always wants to live dangerously, who is always walking on the wild side, laughing in the face of danger. He was that sort of person.

He supposed if he were to survive the war he wouldn't be much of a person. He'd probably wind up an addict of some sort, trying to chase down the high that living such a dangerous life gave him. Trying to find solace in a drug, trying to find another way to keep him up at night, push him to the limits, stop him from needing sleep. Or wind up in some other sort of illegal activity. He chuckled to himself, it was a shame that the wall fell down, he could have had a good life running guns, a life he had seen romanticized in books.

There was no real evil in the world, aside from Voldemort. There was no way to keep up that edge if the war were to end. No, he wanted this war to go on for the rest of his life. He could do that too, it was within his power. Omit one detail to one group, forge another to the other, drag it out into a series of near-misses, small confrontations, avoiding the final showdown for as long as possible, keep things going.

He had no regard for the other lives that may be lost prolonging the war. They were of no interest to him. He never pretended to be nice. He never pretended to care. Whether or not the boy-who-lived continued to do so did not matter to him. He kept him alive long enough to begin the war. He had repaid his life debt, there was no reason to care about the boy from this point forward. He did not care how many of his colleagues, so-called friends fell, the only life that mattered to him was his own. He had learned long ago that caring for others was a useless waste of time and emotion.

No, the only thing that he cared about was himself, and his own happiness, and he was happy here, on the border of sanity, out on the edge of reason, ready to tumble off into the abyss of death at any second. He was happy stretched taught, pushed to his limits and even over. He was content to continue living his life, praying for a swift death before he'd have to experience a life without stress, before he'd have to experience peace.


End file.
